[The answer, in a word, is 'both'. But if Lark wants to be honest--and for now he does--the answer can't be compressed into a single word.]
I have changed. I've carved out, and given up, and reshaped pieces of myself in order to survive here with my mind in one piece. I've dug around for things that are broken so that I can try to heal them, in case that will get me out--but also because I want to be whole.
But there are things about myself that make me who I am. Things that I love. I can't let the Admiral erase those or I wouldn't be me.
I've done all of that work. I've been the one who has outlasted warden after warden. Whatever progress I've made is mine. What right does some stranger, someone who didn't even know me when I got here, have to benefit off of my life? I'm not here bleeding and burning and fighting just so someone can show up at the eleventh hour and claim credit. They get a miracle--to save dead loved ones or rescue dying worlds. Do you know what I get? I get to go home. Home to a world that's trying to kill me and all of my people. That's all. That's my prize.
Some months back, my co-workers staged... well, an 'intervention', as embarrassing as the whole thing was. They were trying to convince me that I ought to stop trying to figure out who killed my predecessor, stop suspecting them of having been involved or possibly even having killed her. They asked me to put down my guard, to pretend as if the matter was dealt with, leave it to the police.
[ A careful pause. ]
I discovered not long after that that someone I'd once called a friend, one of my assistants, had in fact been dead for almost a year. That her murderer had overwritten everything we knew of her with a 'new' Sasha and taken her place. That she'd been feeding my paranoia in an attempt to get me to free her from an item that the Institute had in artifact storage.
[ A pause.]
I did. And she almost killed me, as well as both of my other assistants at the time. She would have if I hadn't been saved by, of all people, Jurgen Leitner.
[ He lets that hang in the air for a moment before he continues. ]
I don't suppose you can see where I might be going with all this?
Well, after a rather... illuminating discussion with him, as I've alluded to previously, I needed a moment to myself, a cigarette, and I slipped away to take care of matters.
And when I returned, it was to his corpse sitting in my office and a bloody metal pipe left there clear as day.
Suffice to say I ran. But that is very- that is very much besides the point.
[ There's a slow inhale, a tired tired exhale.]
It led to a certain reevaluation of my methods, my ideologies, m-my worldview, really. I like to think I've... I've made an effort to be different, to... to heal wounds, old wounds. The oldest, in some ways. To... reach out where before all I'd done was step away.
[ He huffs, a truncated laugh.]
I've had some missteps. I... well, I'm certainly no role model, of course. But I think the point I was getting to was that that 'intervention' didn't do much more than make me certain of my course at the time.
[ Some of the tension leaves his voice, because they're no longer talking about personal things, just conceptual things. Just... things to talk about.]
The point is... I'm not sure how much any warden does, or could do to- I don't think- I can't imagine earning such a thing by changing another person, by... by manipulating them, ultimately. Because that's all it would be.
I think.
[ There's a soft rushing shuffle, his hand through his hair right beside the communicator, quiet but slightly discordant with the whir of the tape recorder underneath.]
That... may all just be my projection, however. O-or perhaps just the perspective of someone w-who tends to watch, to chronicle, as opposed to more active- is what I was getting at.
[Lark just listens, letting Sims work them through what is clearly deeply uncomfortable territory and then through to his new life on the Barge. Lark can detect lies easily when they're in person; dishonesty has subtle chemical markers, and the steadiest voice is still marked by a skipped heartbeat or a tic. Over the network, Lark's talents are reduced to the ones he learned as an attorney working with horrific people, but he can't pick out any lies.
He doesn't really want to like a new warden. The few he likes already are deeply important to him and, therefore, complicate his life a lot because he would love nothing more than to massacre every one of his jailers.
But it's hard not to like Jon after listening to him so silently.]
Manipulation is all it would be. And it's why I just- I've never...I trusted some of my wardens. But I was keeping them from getting on with the lives they wanted and they left, or they were kicked out. That's the hard reality.
I haven't had many active wardens. The few I did have didn't last very long. [Because Lark is a deeply manipulative person, perhaps? Hmmm.] The ones who stuck around the longest didn't interfere in my life at all. We were friends. I trusted them to guard the things that I can't function without, and they did. In return, I tried not to get into too much trouble.
But they weren't really observing. The biggest help I ever had came from someone who...I think you would've liked him. He understood the importance of watching and inferring. He watched me without my even knowing, and when I was getting out of line he had facts to knock me back into place. And he wasn't even a warden at the time. He just paid attention and then told me what he saw, what I was blind to.
We need more wardens like that. [For the first time, Lark sounds confident, like he's seen a trail that wasn't there before.]
So, yeah, no, I don't think it's just you projecting.
[ The thing that Lark will learn if they have any further association (which is almost certain, given the library and he may even have something of a clue already) is that Jon isn't actually much of a liar.
He has relied on lies in the past, poorly, because deception is, unfortunately, necessary when one is in a perilous situation but he is also abysmal at it. He can't act worth a damn, can't really be anyone but himself and unabashedly most of the time. He can fain politeness for a while, like anyone, but even then, his limit is rather low.
Even what lies he had used were situational: 'I'm not surveilling his house, I'm doing his performance review' or 'I definitely wasn't stabbed by a monster with knives for hands, clearly it was a breadknife and I did it to myself' which, really, is such terrible lying that it's practically a kind of truth. All the subtlety of a 13 year old trying to get a later bedtime, this one.
If anything, Jon is more of a cypher: his truth is plain and loud and clear... but it may be expressed in ways that require a bit of thinking (and almost certainly patience) to puzzle out.
But he listens, silent, with the kind of rapt, quiet breathes that speak to someone who isn't just waiting for what they can say back. Manipulation is all it would be. Playing into someone else's plan.
He understands that. Intimately. Even now, what he's doing, what he's becoming... it's part of something else, someone else's desires. And even if it's giving him things he wants along with all the things he doesn't, he too regrets every bit of progress, wishes he could throttle Elias for every encouraging smile.
He listens to the rest the same way, though. There's a quick, singular hiccup of sound at 'someone he would have liked' since there's parts of the person he describes that sounds achingly close to Georgie for him. Yes, sometimes there needs to be someone to knock you back into place. He hadn't even known how much until he'd gotten her back properly.
He wonders how well he'll do without her here.
But as he ends, what Lark will hear is a kind of relief, an exhale with a bit of a raspy chuckle at the end of it and the soft liquid sound of someone taking a sip of something when the communicator is tucked up against their shoulder. Once he's swallowed-]
I shall do my best to take that as a prescription and not a compliment.
[ A deeper breath in.]
Well, I certainly don't want to take up too much of your time, Mr. Tennant- er... Mr. Tennant or Lark? Everyone seems to prefer first names around here but as you like.
[Truth be told, this is the first time anyone has asked him. Formal terms really haven't been handed out to any inmate. Hell, Arthas was probably the Prince of Darkness or some shit, and he still got mocked.
Then again, Arthas was a giant of a try-hard, so...]
How about a compromise? Mr Tennant when we're working in the library, Lark when we're not.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
I have changed. I've carved out, and given up, and reshaped pieces of myself in order to survive here with my mind in one piece. I've dug around for things that are broken so that I can try to heal them, in case that will get me out--but also because I want to be whole.
But there are things about myself that make me who I am. Things that I love. I can't let the Admiral erase those or I wouldn't be me.
I've done all of that work. I've been the one who has outlasted warden after warden. Whatever progress I've made is mine. What right does some stranger, someone who didn't even know me when I got here, have to benefit off of my life? I'm not here bleeding and burning and fighting just so someone can show up at the eleventh hour and claim credit. They get a miracle--to save dead loved ones or rescue dying worlds. Do you know what I get? I get to go home. Home to a world that's trying to kill me and all of my people. That's all. That's my prize.
no subject
[ His voice is softer, clearly contemplative.]
Some months back, my co-workers staged... well, an 'intervention', as embarrassing as the whole thing was. They were trying to convince me that I ought to stop trying to figure out who killed my predecessor, stop suspecting them of having been involved or possibly even having killed her. They asked me to put down my guard, to pretend as if the matter was dealt with, leave it to the police.
[ A careful pause. ]
I discovered not long after that that someone I'd once called a friend, one of my assistants, had in fact been dead for almost a year. That her murderer had overwritten everything we knew of her with a 'new' Sasha and taken her place. That she'd been feeding my paranoia in an attempt to get me to free her from an item that the Institute had in artifact storage.
[ A pause.]
I did. And she almost killed me, as well as both of my other assistants at the time. She would have if I hadn't been saved by, of all people, Jurgen Leitner.
[ He lets that hang in the air for a moment before he continues. ]
I don't suppose you can see where I might be going with all this?
no subject
[He is guessing anyway, of course, because it's what he does. But he wouldn't put money on it yet.]
no subject
And when I returned, it was to his corpse sitting in my office and a bloody metal pipe left there clear as day.
Suffice to say I ran. But that is very- that is very much besides the point.
[ There's a slow inhale, a tired tired exhale.]
It led to a certain reevaluation of my methods, my ideologies, m-my worldview, really. I like to think I've... I've made an effort to be different, to... to heal wounds, old wounds. The oldest, in some ways. To... reach out where before all I'd done was step away.
[ He huffs, a truncated laugh.]
I've had some missteps. I... well, I'm certainly no role model, of course. But I think the point I was getting to was that that 'intervention' didn't do much more than make me certain of my course at the time.
[ Some of the tension leaves his voice, because they're no longer talking about personal things, just conceptual things. Just... things to talk about.]
The point is... I'm not sure how much any warden does, or could do to- I don't think- I can't imagine earning such a thing by changing another person, by... by manipulating them, ultimately. Because that's all it would be.
I think.
[ There's a soft rushing shuffle, his hand through his hair right beside the communicator, quiet but slightly discordant with the whir of the tape recorder underneath.]
That... may all just be my projection, however. O-or perhaps just the perspective of someone w-who tends to watch, to chronicle, as opposed to more active- is what I was getting at.
[ A low, self-depreciating chuckle.]
Someone who's barely into the job at that.
no subject
He doesn't really want to like a new warden. The few he likes already are deeply important to him and, therefore, complicate his life a lot because he would love nothing more than to massacre every one of his jailers.
But it's hard not to like Jon after listening to him so silently.]
Manipulation is all it would be. And it's why I just- I've never...I trusted some of my wardens. But I was keeping them from getting on with the lives they wanted and they left, or they were kicked out. That's the hard reality.
I haven't had many active wardens. The few I did have didn't last very long. [Because Lark is a deeply manipulative person, perhaps? Hmmm.] The ones who stuck around the longest didn't interfere in my life at all. We were friends. I trusted them to guard the things that I can't function without, and they did. In return, I tried not to get into too much trouble.
But they weren't really observing. The biggest help I ever had came from someone who...I think you would've liked him. He understood the importance of watching and inferring. He watched me without my even knowing, and when I was getting out of line he had facts to knock me back into place. And he wasn't even a warden at the time. He just paid attention and then told me what he saw, what I was blind to.
We need more wardens like that. [For the first time, Lark sounds confident, like he's seen a trail that wasn't there before.]
So, yeah, no, I don't think it's just you projecting.
no subject
He has relied on lies in the past, poorly, because deception is, unfortunately, necessary when one is in a perilous situation but he is also abysmal at it. He can't act worth a damn, can't really be anyone but himself and unabashedly most of the time. He can fain politeness for a while, like anyone, but even then, his limit is rather low.
Even what lies he had used were situational: 'I'm not surveilling his house, I'm doing his performance review' or 'I definitely wasn't stabbed by a monster with knives for hands, clearly it was a breadknife and I did it to myself' which, really, is such terrible lying that it's practically a kind of truth. All the subtlety of a 13 year old trying to get a later bedtime, this one.
If anything, Jon is more of a cypher: his truth is plain and loud and clear... but it may be expressed in ways that require a bit of thinking (and almost certainly patience) to puzzle out.
But he listens, silent, with the kind of rapt, quiet breathes that speak to someone who isn't just waiting for what they can say back. Manipulation is all it would be. Playing into someone else's plan.
He understands that. Intimately. Even now, what he's doing, what he's becoming... it's part of something else, someone else's desires. And even if it's giving him things he wants along with all the things he doesn't, he too regrets every bit of progress, wishes he could throttle Elias for every encouraging smile.
He listens to the rest the same way, though. There's a quick, singular hiccup of sound at 'someone he would have liked' since there's parts of the person he describes that sounds achingly close to Georgie for him. Yes, sometimes there needs to be someone to knock you back into place. He hadn't even known how much until he'd gotten her back properly.
He wonders how well he'll do without her here.
But as he ends, what Lark will hear is a kind of relief, an exhale with a bit of a raspy chuckle at the end of it and the soft liquid sound of someone taking a sip of something when the communicator is tucked up against their shoulder. Once he's swallowed-]
I shall do my best to take that as a prescription and not a compliment.
[ A deeper breath in.]
Well, I certainly don't want to take up too much of your time, Mr. Tennant- er... Mr. Tennant or Lark? Everyone seems to prefer first names around here but as you like.
no subject
Then again, Arthas was a giant of a try-hard, so...]
How about a compromise? Mr Tennant when we're working in the library, Lark when we're not.
no subject
Though with that, I believe I'll leave you to your evening.
Unless you had another question, of course.
no subject
no subject
[ Not laughing or upset by that. Just... interesting. Hmm, as the dialogue said.
Not really what he would have expected.]
You're, er, certainly welcome. And I'll get to work on the archive space. Till then, though.
[ And that's a sign off.]